Ye, living in your luxury and ease
Think not of all your country's fathers bore;
And still forget the famine and disease
Those pioneers suffered on your shore.
Their names are unfamiliar on your tongue,
Their deeds but vaguely known, their praise unsung.
VII.
So has it been, and so shall ever be
The man who stands to-day a shining light,
The hero who commands our fealty,
To-morrow, in oblivion's dark night,
Will be forgotten, or, on history's page,
May flicker dimly in a future age.
VIII.
Think not, ye men who seek to carve your name
On monuments of everlasting stone,
That ye can thus secure eternal fame.
Far greater deeds than yours have others done,
And greater far the harvest they have sown,
Which now ye reap, while they remain unknown.
IX.
As through the ages, silent and unseen,
The tiny corals work beneath the wave
And build a reef, which reef had never been
Except each coral there had found a grave;
So work the heroes of the human race,
And in their work-field find a resting place.
X.
How vast the number of the coral shells
That form the reef! And yet of these but one
Of many thousands ever elsewhere dwells
Than on that reef; all hidden and unknown
The rest remain, and few indeed are they
Which shine as jewels at a later day.